Michael Andrew Kukuchka

Hybrid Web/Graphic Designer & Software Developer

Other CMS’s Compared –

June 12th, 2015

Umbraco

Unfortunately, Umbraco is not ideal for personal blogs or smaller websites. That is because it was designed with much larger organizations in mind. It’s currently used by brands like wired.co.uk, Vogue and asp.net.

According to the Umbraco site, it “is the choice of many organizations because of its no-cost, open-source licensing, its simplicity, and its unlimited potential.” It was built from the ground up for Microsoft’s .NET technology, and as such it is mainly a CMS for .NET developers. Of course, it can also be modified to work more naturally as a CMS too.

Again, it’s great for larger organizations and developers who use the .NET framework and related applications on a regular basis. It is open source which means it supports third-party modifications and additions, but even without the added support it works great as-is. The user interface is simple and convenient, and the platform includes support for media and digital assets similar to WordPress.

The .NET support also means that if you have a skilled developer or two on hand you can shape the platform to work exactly how you need it.

Joomla

Joomla is arguably one of WordPress’ biggest competitors. Behind the platform is a very active community of developers and bloggers. Together they’ve created more than 7,000 extensions for the platform that add all kinds of functionality and features. In fact, you can find an extension that does almost anything. They can be likened to plugins for WordPress.

The downfall of this CMS is that you’ll have to pay before you can access most plugins or visual themes. This is similar to WordPress, except Joomla does not have as many free options floating around.

That said, it’s a very powerful CMS and will work well for just about any site. You can even use it for a personal blog, or independent publication.